Star Wars Battlefront 2's free Last Jedi DLC marches out today

Oh look, Star Wars has snuck up on me again. At midnight tonight, cinema goers that are enthusiastic enough to brave the crowds will get to ogle The Last Jedi, sci-fi’s premier space wizard opera. Cinema screens aren’t the only place you’ll find new Star Wars, though – EA are dropping a batch of free Star Wars Battlefront 2 content today, giving you the chance to get new Star Wars under your fingers as well as across from your eyeballs. That stuff gets everywhere.

The Last Jedi DLC brings a couple of new heroes, multiplayer maps and ships, though I’m most interested in the three new chapters for the singleplayer campaign.

Those singlelayer missions tie into the new film, but if you’re worried about spoilers then Battlefront 2 writer Mitch Dyer will tell you that you don’t need to be overly concerned. In a tweet, he suggests that those who want into the movie completely blind should hold off on playing the new Resurrection chapters of the campaign, but that if you’ve already watched the trailers (I presume for the movie) then you’re good to go. The new chapters follow Iden Versio during the First Order’s rise to power. Iden is a likeable character whose motivation is neither coherent nor particularly interesting, but I do want to see how this bridges that gap between the end of the original trilogy and The Force Awakens.

Between the chokepointy maps and the infuriating progression system, I don’t have much desire to return to the multiplayer – although this update does fix one of my gripes with it. You can now pop 3 Star Cards into each trooper’s loadout straight away, where previously you had to unlock a bunch of cards that you’d likely never use in order to access the second and third slots. It’s smoothing out one wrinkle on a system that’s a scrunched up and tattered mess, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Those new heroes I mentioned are Finn and Captain Phasma, and they tie into a ‘choose your faction’ event that EA started on December 5th. The team that completes the most challenges will earn a special crate for their hero, and there’ll be more challenges and rewards in the weeks to come.

As for those new maps, Crait is a planetary affair where the rebels have to stop the Empire from escorting an MT-M6. D’Quar is a Starfighter assault map, in which you can now fly around in Tallie Lintra’s RZ-2 A-wing. Poe Dameron’s T-70 X-wing has a new ability, too.

The update also brings a bunch of balance changes for heroes, as well as bug fixes and server-lag improvements. Lando, Chewbacca and Palpatine have all been buffed, while Boba Fett has been toned down a little. I’ll leave you to peruse the patch notes in full.